Christine Stoddard

I was shivering and sweating. What if the procedure didn't work? What if I had serious complications? What if I had to come back?

Some people think that the size and budget of your wedding reflect how much love you and your partner have for each other: The bigger the wedding, the bigger the love. On the other hand, my father likes to joke, “The bigger the wedding, the bigger the divorce.”

Looking back at childhood photos now is bittersweet. In the moment the camera caught, I'm always smiling, but I wasn't always a happy child. I was fat-shamed almost daily.

[CN: mention of intimate partner violence] Patsy Cline sang with such a beautiful range of emotion because she had experienced so many ups and downs in her own life.

Drag queens, like Lady Bunny, teach outsiders to embrace ourselves and to embrace others. That means doing more than demonstrating tolerance.

Fielding off-putting questions and comments is a regular part of the mixed-race experience around the world. Yet this social phenomenon is especially common in places with a legacy of institutionalized and cultural racism. That includes the South.

Though I was raised in an interdenominational household, my upbringing could at best be described as vaguely Christian.

My now-husband was stunned the first time I told him what I do while walking alone. I mentioned behavior typical of so many city-dwelling women: carrying pepper spray, checking my back every block, trying to look confident while struggling to properly breathe. After a moment of silence, he teared up and said, “I don’t want you to have to worry.”

For years, my white father called my mother’s beauty an “exotic” beauty. When I started to come into my own, he began calling me “exotic,” too. It wasn’t until high school that I began to understand why this word bothered me. Though my father meant it as a compliment, the word “othered” my mother, younger sisters, and me.

Plenty of Americans have names that don't convey their full cultural background because, at this point, so many of us are mixed up. How could our names possibly communicate all that we are? But when the time comes for an interracial, interethnic, international couple to name their child, they're often faced with a political decision.